Trouble at Messe des Morts

“Welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sit upon your back; and I know too what sits within your soul. Revenge sits within your soul: a black scab grow wherever you bite; with revenge your poison makes the soul giddy! Thus do I speak to you in parables, you who make the soul giddy, you preachers of equality! You are tarantulas and dealers in hidden revengefulness! But I will bring your hiding places to light: therefore I laugh my laughter of the heights in your faces. I pull at your web that your rage may lure you from your cave of lies and your revenge may bound forward from behind your word ‘justice'”
–F.W. Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra, “Of the tarantulas”

A report by Dubhthach

I was 16 when I first heard Graveland. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It sounded as though the walls of heaven themselves were being torn down. Though I had no strong philosophical foundation at that age, I could feel the metaphysical abstractions that dictated right & wrong were being smashed. Following an event or two in my youth that tested my willingness to belong to such a heretical subculture, I became acutely aware of the fact that this choice came with consequences. Modern-day heretics are not the atheists who, despite not believing in Yahweh, are devoted fanatics of the religion of human rights, nor are they the swathes of drug-addicted pseudo-existentialists who think Kvarforth from Shining is a genius rather than an attention whore adept at separating them from their money. God is dead, and has been since before Zarathustra proclaimed it through his German mouthpiece. While anti-Christianity is integral to black metal, and serves an important purpose[1], it is essentially a dead horse. God may be dead, but the herd-instinct in man has found its expression elsewhere. He isn’t dead because the religious instinct is gone; he is dead because he no longer serves his purpose. The god of the Israelites exists specifically to justify universalist morality. With the coming of whiggism, communism, and “left”-leaning anarchism, new abstractions and constructs were formulated in order to justify the moral absolutism of the shepherds. Whether these were democracy, human rights, capital, the state, suffrage or mercantilism, the end is the same. Secularized religious instinct uses the same abstract concepts to justify universal moral absolutism. When I first discovered black metal, the rejection of this moral imperative is what attracted me, and its subsequent glorification of strength, of pride, and of ascension. The extolling of natural laws[2], the rejection of petty materialism, the Faustian striving for knowledge and the Nietzschean drive to the Übermensch drew me to Graveland ideologically. My initiation would come later, but that is a story best reserved for another time.

Fast forward a decade. Not having been very interested in seeing a show since Peste Noire toured Canada in 2008[3] a friend of mine alerted me to the fact that Graveland was going to be headlining Messe des Morts festival. I immediately bought my ticket, and booked my flight and hotel for the night Graveland was playing (I have little to no interest in Mgła). Having moved from my place of birth to this Atlantic Hell, Montréal was quite a bit farther than it normally would have been, but this was a once in a lifetime event. After a day of book shopping, I laced up my boots and walked to the venue, well aware of the impending Antifa protest. As I came to within about two blocks of the venue, I could see sirens blaring. Tons of them. It was actually difficult to see what was going on by the venue because there were so many sirens. Arriving at the intersection with my destination, still not knowing exactly what the building looked like, I was guided by riot police around their perimeter until I saw a lineup of bald dudes and long-hairs in black clothes. The line-up, I presumed. “Is this the line to get in?” I asked in my peasant Franco-Ontarian French to the fellow in the Peste Noire hoodie. Yes, it was. Sitting in the cold for about an hour, more festival attendees arrived, many of whom made jokes about how much Poles love Germany. A member of one of the bands was escorted into the venue by riot police. Random passersby came and said things like “You guys are supposed to be the big bad nazis? You seem way less volatile than those animals on the other street.” I still hadn’t actually seen the protestors, so I had no idea why our entrance was being delayed by so long. I could hear them every now and then shouting, “NO NAZIS ON OUR STREETS!”, a demonstrably false statement if we were to go by their own bizarro logic. An Asian guy close to me shouted back “What nazis?” It was quite the surreal scene, with their echoing chants and myself, along with the other attendees, waiting in the cold without seeing them bringing to mind images of Helm’s Deep.

More riot cops arrived, some sporting full body armour and tear gas guns. One walked by, told us to go up further against the wall, then said, “You’ll have your show, lads” in charming joual. How bizarre to have the police seemingly on our side. In fact, the whole reason they were there is because our red buddies had lit some fires and thrown smoke bombs at the entrance to the venue.

Another hour passed and I saw an old comrade of mine from out of town. I walked over to him, on the other side of the large police blockade[4]. From there, we saw the reds. RASH, Antifa, Dure Réalité, and a few tumblrinas to boot. There were red flags, black flags, and a pathetic sign reading HAIL SATAN NOT HITLER as they chanted the creative slogan of “Fuck Graveland”, as though that would hurt Rob Darken’s feelings to the point that he would stop making music altogether. Eventually, word came out that the show was cancelled. Later we would find out that this was because Antifa took a page out of Combat 18’s[5] book and threatened to bomb the venue (in addition to having members with tickets ready to attack attendees with pepper-spray and, presumably, other weapons once they were inside the venue).

I’m certainly not going to fault the promoter for his decision. He is a veteran black metal maniac, and has been instrumental in the building of the Québécois black metal scene into what it is today. His decision was pragmatic, in order to avoid liability and ensure the fest could continue in coming years. Upon hearing that the gig was cancelled, a few of us, including some people I know from my hometown (whom I had pegged for liberal hippie types) started chanting back at the protestors. “Better dead than red!”; “Hasta la vista anti-fascista” etc., until one of the promoters came out and told us that it was useless. He was right. Besides, we couldn’t confront the protestors, since they were so conveniently protected behind a group of about 30-40 riot cops.[6]

My comrade and I left, took the metro back to the street where my hotel was booked, got something to eat and did some drinking. It wasn’t until the next morning that I heard what had happened after we had left. The brave reds had followed some of the less imposing members of the crowd and swarmed them ten-to-three, as they always do. They also followed some of the attendees back to their hotel and tried to set it on fire. It’s gotten to the point where attendees who could have been sympathetic to their cause are diametrically opposed to them as a result of their overkill.

That said, after having had a few days to process it, there are some things that have to be said. Elsewhere, Militant Zone and Operation Werewolf have both stated that this is a heretical subculture. Those of us who are in this for more than just the music know damn well that we have to face the odd inquisition, be it the PMRC of Tipper Gore or George Soros’s Antifa henchmen. The latter’s biggest blunder on Saturday night was the assumption that just because Graveland is pro-European, that all the fans attending the show would be racist boneheads. In fact, I’d argue that none of them were. I was surrounded by Mexicans (who had travelled their all the way from their home country), Asians, and Jewish metalheads. But it doesn’t matter to them that most of us judge men by their character rather than the melanin content of their skin. Their vision of the world is diametrically opposed to ours. They treat these non-whites as pets at best, and political tools at worst. Their mindset, dictating that they need to be told what they can and can’t listen to “for their own good” is infinitely more “colonial” than anything being sung about by the bands on the bill. But once again, it doesn’t matter to these people. They are moral absolutists. They are always right. There is no grey. Faced with this, cries of “antifa r da real fascists” are pointless and pathetic.

Their overkill has worked in our favour, however. Leftists infiltrated punk many decades ago. Punk was originally very anti-hippie, and anti-communist[7]. It was protest music against the status quo, it was about telling the system to fuck off. What has it become now? A race to see who can be the biggest fucking pussy. It is important that we do not allow this to happen to black metal. It almost did when Darkthrone started the stonecold retarded METAL PUNX trend about a decade ago, but thankfully it only blossomed among sub-cultural tourists. Don’t sit there and justify that you listen to Graveland but “don’t agree with the lyrics.” The majority of the lyrics are simply about war and paganism anyway. Even if they weren’t, own up to the fact that you like something controversial. The world isn’t black and white, and you don’t need to virtue-signal why you like a band. Anyone worth their salt knows Graveland’s history. They certainly aren’t the big bad nazis Antifa thinks they are, but they are obviously on the traditionalist spectrum.

Antifa, RASH, and all the other chattel that took to the streets of Montréal this past weekend are the unknowing pawns of the so-called system. They are against war, yet they supported Hillary the war-hawk. They claim to fight the system, but their globalist, egalitarian ideology does nothing but push the agenda of global finance, the coalescence of diverse groups of people into a single market. They claim to fight capitalism, but the intended results of their actions would generate revenue for the corporate big-wigs that are outsourcing the working class jobs they claim to defend. Without beating a dead horse, they are the soldiers of the inquisition. If you consider yourself a fan of black metal, they are your enemy. Their use of the slogan “Hail Satan, not Hitler” is a gross misinterpretation of the great Seigneur Voland that drives the heart of black metal. Their Satan is a liberal pussy. He is simply Yahweh with horns. All are equal before his eyes. Nevermind those scientific truths that clearly demonstrate that equality is a myth. Just sweep those under the rug. The Satan that drives black metal is Lucifer, The Light Bearer, the promethean flame that shines its violent light over the darkest truths of our time, illuminating the hard facts of life: That there is no black and white, only shades of grey; that the strong ultimately get to decide what is right and what is wrong. He is the Faustian spirit that guides the Occidental man in his search of knowledge, strength, and ascension. He is the archetype of rebellion, of hatred for weakness. He will not keep you safe from mean words and rude people.

It is very fitting that the cowards who proudly bore that sign for the media hid behind the police, and waited until after the crowds had dispersed to swarm a handful of teenagers and attempt to set fire to a hotel hosting some of the attendees of the fest. These are reprehensible acts, and your indignation is justified. However, do not waste your time complaining that “Antifa are the real fascists.” This isn’t the first time that the inquisitors of moral absolutism have come knocking at our door. This time, they didn’t finish us off. This means that we can learn and move on. Perhaps the promoter will be more clandestine when divulging the location of the festival in advance. Perhaps he will choose to keep the names of the more controversial bands secret until a week or two before the gig. Perhaps he will hold the gig in a less international city, one where there is little to no Antifa presence. Regardless, we are heretics. We are the ones who oppose the garbage ideology spread not only by Judeo-Christianity, but the new secular religions that oppose our Nietzschean, quasi-Traditionalist view of the world. Do not make excuses for yourself. Do not let this deter you from pursuing the path you have chosen. Live up to the ideals with which you have aligned yourself. Pick up some weights; learn to fight. Perhaps next time you find yourself cornered by a group of red thugs, you’ll be ready. Most importantly, this is only a loss if nothing was learned. Do not let the resentment of the left destroy the underground. Stay true to yourself, stay true to the way of life you have chosen, for pagan, heretic blood.

P.S.: For a recounting of the night’s events from a more “neutral” news source, I recommend reading this article (in French).

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Article edited by Torso and Degtyarov.

Notes:
[1] Specifically in parts of the world still under the strangle-hold of Protestant fundamentalism, such as the Yankee Bible Belt.
[2] The laws of nature, where the strongest is king.
[3] Despite having visited many gigs since then.
[4] Quite a waste of resources, I must say.
[5] A group I am still convinced was a false flag to delegitimize anti-globalism, but I won’t put my tin foil hat on for this article.
[6] Who–I must emphasize–were simply doing their job.
[7] Johnny Ramone was a fierce Republican until his dying day.